 the two-wheel revolution here on thinktecawaii.com. We are discussing micro mobility, which is a fancy way of saying pretty much getting around everywhere you can except with a car. And it includes obviously bicycles and electric bikes now. It includes scooters of various kinds, e-kick scooters. It includes motorized skateboards, some with one wheel, some with two wheels, three wheels, four wheels. And in my world, it includes things like walking and even wheelchairs, which we're going to be talking about over the course of the show. But today, we're very fortunate to have the Executive Director of the Wide Bicycling League of Interval and Institution here in Hawaii. He's relatively new and yet not so new. And so Travis, counsel, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Peter. Happy to be here. Great. So first of all, you recently completed the Honolulu Century Ride. And this was the 39th annual, except of course, you didn't have one for the last couple of years. So how did it go? Yeah. So just this past weekend, we had a little over a thousand riders out for the 39th annual Honolulu Century Ride. And it was great. Like you said, we haven't had this since 2019, which was a bit of a celebration to have people back in person. And I think there was a lot of positive energy, people that were really excited to be out there. We had great weather, a lot of support, over 200 volunteers that helped make this event happen. So really a strong celebration of cycling and ultimately a big fundraiser for our organization as well. So great. This was the first time you've ever done this bus and bike arrangement. How did that go? Yeah. So this was a fun option where folks could ride to the 50 mile mark or technically the 100 mile turnaround. So half the course and then catch a ride back to Kapiolani Park, back to the finish area. And so really be able to see the whole course, but only have to ride half the distance. So it went well. You know, this was a little bit of a test run this year. We had about I think 16 or 17 people take advantage of it. Not a huge number, but enough that showed interest that we'll likely do it again in the future. Just again, to give people some options to see a different route. Correct. Over a thousand cyclists, you say. Yeah. 1049, if my math was correct. All right. Very good. We won't ask for those last 49. So you've been here in Hawaii before you worked for Hawaii Bison League before, but now you're back as the executive director and tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got to this moment. Sure. Yeah. So I started working for Hawaii Bison League in 2013 when we moved out to Hawaii actually from my wife's PhD program. And she actually ran into the then executive director on the bus. They were both riding and ultimately I was offered a job to work here as the membership coordinator and ultimately events director. So I have experience putting on the Honolulu Center ride previously. I then went off, got my master's degree and also ultimately opened my own bike shop in Waikiki. The pandemic hit. We moved back to the mainland for a couple of different jobs that brought us closer to where we grew up. And then ultimately Hawaii pulled us back. My wife got a job back out here. And unfortunately, Laurie, the most recent executive director was moving on at that point and this job became available. So bikes have always been a part of my both career, but also personal life. So I'm happy to be back at HBL with previous knowledge, but also the knowledge I've gained since working here and kind of recovering, if you will, from the COVID time and really seeing where we can take this organization in the near future. You ran a sort of a bicycle association on the mainland most recently. Is that right? Yeah, correct. I worked for the New England Mountain Bike Association. So a large member based organization similar to HBL, but really focused on mountain bikes. And it had 32 chapters across all of New England. So quite a number of people and logistics and, you know, it was a great opportunity to learn a little bit more on the nonprofit side, you know, executive director of that nonprofit as well. And then to bring that back to HBL and ultimately hopefully expand HBL to focus on other, you know, types of riders, whether it's mountain biking or, you know, BMX or other things like that, the larger community. Okay, just for the record now, how many bicycles do you have? People ask me this a lot. I think I have eight bicycles currently, one of every flavor. I've had more than that at times, but currently I believe it's eight. And what your favorite is the tricycle? Exactly. What is your favorite? I have a fun bike that I built up from a frame that is my like commuter grocery getter. It's got lights that are built into it and kind of a big basket on the front, you know, what I take to the beach to go drink coffee in the morning kind of thing. So that would definitely be my favorite. Very good. And just for the record also, I'm assuming at this stage, none of them are electric. I do not personally, my wife has an electric bike that we use kind of as a car replacement. And we only have one car between the two of us. So she rides that to work fairly regularly. And we've talked many times about getting a second electric bike to ideally leave the car at home. All right. So you've come back to HBL. How long has it been now? It's been five months, six months? Yeah, yeah. Came back as executive director in May and then full time later in June. So we just moved back in June. So how's the organization doing? Give us a quick idea. I don't think anybody has a full grasp of all the things HBL does. I went on the website yesterday and discovered senior biking classes on recumbents, which I had not even had a clue about. And now I'm going to have to sign up. So give us an idea of what the organization does and how you're doing right now. Yeah, that's a great question. So we have kind of three main focuses at HBL. We have our events, you know, like the Honolulu Century Ride and the Metric Century Ride on the North Shore and a bunch of smaller events. We have the education, which you just mentioned as well, which is, you know, everything from our bike ed program, which teaches fourth graders, over 8,000 fourth graders every year that's been going on for almost 35 years at this point, all the way up to the senior cycling where we keep people active even in older ages and everything in between adult learn to ride. So our education has a lot of grant components to that. And then our advocacy is kind of the other pillar of HBL. So where we work with the city, we work with the state, advocate for better bike lanes, bike facilities, changes in policies and laws. So we kind of have those three main events, main focuses, advocacy, education and events. And as far as how HBL is doing, you know, we certainly are, you know, back in a growth stage, you know, in the sense I feel like during COVID we were in that maintenance mode, like most small nonprofit, small organizations really just trying to, you know, button down the hatches and make it through. We weren't able to have some of those big fundraisers. So we have an awesome core team for full-time individuals and then a number of part-time individuals who help. So we're definitely growing back out and excited to be able to get back in person and kind of, you know, start the organization going strong again. A lot of locales seem to have seen added growth in general personal mobility or whatever during the last couple of years, people didn't want to be on buses necessarily, didn't want to be in public mass transit. Did we have the same sort of thing happen here? Yeah, I think we saw, you know, there was definitely a bicycle boom across, you know, probably the world, but definitely the U.S. and especially in Hawaii as well. You know, we saw whether it was people that already had a bike in their garage and they got it fixed up to use more or went out and bought a new one. And I think, as you mentioned earlier in the show, that kind of new technology, whether it's the scooters or small electric bikes or those types of, you know, maybe non-traditional two-wheel devices or one-wheel devices, we're seeing those pop up a lot more. And I think, you know, Hawaii is definitely ripe for that. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of congestion and kind of that last mile or last couple mile option for these devices really, I think we're seeing that popularity grow. And, you know, it's always seemed to me, Hawaii, people say two things. First of all, can't ride, not safe. Secondly, Hawaii's a great place to cycle. And I think that's true up to a point, certainly recreationally and for fun, but in terms of commuting or the kind of daily business riding that you are daily life riding that you'd see in Europe, it's hot. You get places sweaty and so forth. And so it seems to me, and I've said this before many times, electric bicycles are kind of the next revolution in what's happening with cycling. How do you see it? I think I definitely share that mentality. I was fortunate enough to take several trips to Europe and visit cities to look at kind of how they did it. I think they were much further along when it came to electric bikes, primarily for the commuting aspect, like you just mentioned, where you can commute in business clothes or even business casual clothes and arrive at work not sweaty and still get there without a vehicle. So I think the e-bike or the electric assist devices are certainly going to play a role into that. I think there's an advocacy component as well of having more workplace, whether it's showers or changing facilities or areas where those that commute not by car or something like that can change and be able to not have that impact their ability to ride their bike to work. And e-bikes are probably an easier solution in the current moment, but work from both ends. What else do you see is coming in the future and the kind of big picture of things? I just got back from the Micro Mobility America show in San Francisco and actually in Richmond in an old restored Ford factory where they once made jeeps and tanks for World War II. It was quite awesome and there were some incredible devices there and a lot of discussion about the future of this kind of thing. So what do you see specifically for Honolulu? What do you see happening in the future? Yeah, I think the interesting thing is that it's likely not going to be a one device that takes over. I think we're going to continue to see this wide variety of electric bikes, the scooters, which I know are very popular in a lot of mainland cities, and those personal devices that really help make it so that it's easier to move around without relying on a car. I think that there's one big component to that and that's infrastructure and making sure that, as you mentioned earlier, that it's actually safe to do this and that there's not a barrier or a perceived barrier even that prevents people from doing it. I think we are seeing a lot of people that maybe even a year or three years ago weren't even thinking about it. I think we're seeing them starting to look at that as a better option, especially as things get more expensive and congestion returns to where it was with our visitors returning and things of that sort. So when you talk about advocacy, the first thing that usually comes to mind is infrastructure. What do you see are the advocacy goals or needs for bicycling in Hawaii right now? Yeah, I think there's a variety. I think there's usually when I talk about advocacy, there's kind of the three different pieces. There's kind of the infrastructure piece of it. There's the education component of it, which whether that's what we do in educating people how to commute, how to ride bikes places, or on the other side educating drivers about how to be safer on the road and make sure. And then there's the enforcement side. There's a lot of traffic violations and dangerous maneuvers, distracted drivers, et cetera, et cetera that do unfortunately make our roads less safe. So I think there's kind of the multiple different pieces there. Infrastructure one being one of the most important, in my opinion, but also kind of somewhat hard to do. We can't really, we don't have a ton more space for it. So it is a little bit of competing for priorities there. But yeah, if you focus on all three of them, I think we can certainly see a good improvement. When you mentioned enforcement, you mentioned drivers, which I think is very important, as everybody at MicroMobility said, it's not the MicroMobility devices that are unsafe, but the 10,000 pound cars that are unsafe. But it doesn't really matter if the person who doesn't get on one doesn't feel safe. But there's also, I think, an enforcement question about people who are on their two wheel devices. How do you deal with that? The hot daughters, the people who just either don't know or don't care or think they're invincible. There's an invisible plastic sheet or shield that's protecting them from these models that are driving around. Yeah, I think that ultimately boils down to kind of a community effort and leading by example and making sure that people around you see you behaving on bikes and other MicroMobility devices. I think HBL plays a role in that. We do provide education, even paper literature education out to the bike shops and new riders and groups like that. I think, unfortunately, there's always that small group that regardless is probably not going to follow the rules. But hopefully we can make that as minimally impactful as possible. I do think that we often get that complaint from drivers that we see people running red lights on bikes and things like that. I think we stand out more than your fellow drivers, etc. Just because we might be more visible, we might be a little bit different than the crowd out there. But I don't think that there's actually more people breaking the rules or anything like that on these. I think that just is more noticeable, unfortunately. Yeah, I agree with you. I think when you're driving and another car cuts you off or pulls in front of you, you kind of curse under your breath, but that's what happens when you're driving. If it happens to be a person on a bicycle who pulls in front of you and you have to stop, oh my god, it's some kind of travesty. Oh, sorry, that's probably not a good word. It's some kind of an awful thing, but that's because we're not used to living in a society where I like the Netherlands or others where people know to look for bikes because they ride them, their grandmother and their children ride them, and they just know that that's part of what you have to do to get everybody to get along. On the infrastructure side, it seems to me, since you were here a few years ago, there has been substantial improvement in some areas. There's certainly a lot more bike lanes, some of them actually separated than there were exactly when you were here before, but two or three years ago, you wouldn't have seen quite so much. Yeah, I think that the city has really taken a hold of when there's an opportunity, when they repave a road, when they change lanes, striping or anything, to really emphasize that complete streets mentality, adding bike lanes, improved pedestrian walkways, etc, etc, which I think is a great opportunity whenever a road is repaved or in some places improved in general, widened or anything like that to add, it's often quite a minimal cost, additional cost to improve it for vulnerable users or people that aren't in a vehicle. I think we're seeing that a lot from both the city and the state in a number of places. That's great. Do you have any idea where the likely incumbent governor, the new governor stands on all those things? He should be a health knight, he should be on our team, right? I'm hopeful to work with whoever's in that position, but I do hope that we are able to kind of emphasize that healthy living, I think the transportation equality, when I look at projects like extending the King's seat, protect the bike lane over into Kalihi, making it accessible for more and more people that might not even already have access to a car, just making it more accessible. And I think on the infrastructure especially, the real focus right now is the missing connections. We're starting to get a lot of patchwork of good infrastructure, like you mentioned, protected bike lanes and off-street paths, but there's a little bit of space in between all of them that could really use those bridges or connections to make it much more of a network. And that's what we're really emphasizing with the city and state to focus on those connections and make sure that these are usable. It'd be like a highway that ends in a field. You could drive there, but it wouldn't be very useful. So we want to make sure that we have useful bike networks. Yeah, you come to an end of a bike lane and you look around and say, well, what now? Where now? Or do I get out in traffic? Do I get up on the sidewalk? Do I get off my bike and walk for a mile? It needs the connection, definitely. So beyond the bike lane, I think everybody can understand the idea of a bike lane that something with a protected curb is better than some painted arrows or ferros on the road. I think that's coming. And of course, it always is going to meet a certain amount of resistance from drivers who may lose or perceive that they're losing parking spaces and are losing lanes. But are there other aspects of infrastructure that people don't quite think of? And I'll tell you why I ask. Again, I went to Micro Mobility and I'm sitting talking to, actually, they have the mayor of where, somewhere, the mayor of Oakland, I think. And is that Libby Schafer? I'll have to look that up. But anyway, she was saying, she was talking about how they were accommodating scooters. And the biggest thing apparently that they could do to improve the scooter situation was to require that when they're not in use that they'd be locked up. And I was sitting with a friend of mine who's a scooter guy, and he said, yeah, easy to say, but you have to have a place to lock them up. So when you think of infrastructure beyond the obvious or the first line of the lanes and protected areas, what else do we need in infrastructure and the connections which you mentioned? What else do we need? I definitely think you mentioned basically bike parking or parking in general, secure bike parking. Thankfully, as we see more high rises and new buildings come up, there are laws that require additional bike infrastructure in those private buildings to accommodate for this. But even on public streets, we do have a city bicycle coordinator who goes out and installs bike racks in popular spots. So I think secure bike parking is an important thing so that you don't come back to just your front wheel or whatever it might be. So I think making sure that there's a safe way to lock your bike or leave your bike someplace, that's usually the second biggest. Once somebody's on there, they have that experience where their bike gets stolen or where they just have a seat get stolen or anything like that. So I think bicycle parking, I mentioned earlier the showers and kind of experience at work. And then really it's more of just like so long as there's, as the culture becomes more popular, where it's just normal to ride your bike places, I think we're going to really see that, the kind of the wave occurs, if you will, that more and more people will come about. And that was really the question that when the bike share system Vicki came in, it was a little bit of chicken or the egg. It's like, is there enough infrastructure to support the amount of bike users that we want to put out there? And then the question was, will there ever become enough infrastructure if there aren't a lot of bike riders? So ultimately Vicki said, we're going to do this and let's make it count. And as you've seen, we've gotten more and more bike lanes since then. Yeah, that's been a tremendous chicken and egg story. Exactly. Because you can't have one without the other. And you get more safety when you have more people on bicycles. But you, if people don't feel safe, they won't get on bicycles. But as you look at this now, the increasing number of bicycles, the increasing number of e-bikes, I mean, you can get a $400 little e-bike at Costco or online that would, you know, scoochie around town. There are more and more one wheels and motorized skateboards, electrified skateboards. How are we going to accommodate all of these different modes in what you described as kind of a limited area for this kind of transportation? Yeah, I mean, I think right now we're seeing kind of the sidewalks and the existing bike lanes really become the places that these individuals go. And I think that's okay. So long as it's done safely and it's shared, but I do think ultimately I hope that it leads to wider spaces, potentially, you know, a lane and a half or take that, bump that parking lane out one more so that we could have, you know, a much wider so it's safe to pass, you know, overtake each other or anything like that. So I do think it's, you know, we're seeing, as we see more and more people using these, I think we'll see less pushback if you will, you know, there's just more individuals using it. So the people driving, there might be fewer of them. And there might be more people that are willing to advocate for the additional space of bike lanes and widening of sidewalks and multi-use paths and things like that. And I think ultimately the real the message there is just share the space, you know, it's, we've worked really hard as, you know, HBL and others to get these bike lanes. But I think ultimately we're very happy to just share them with with other people using them, you know, in one or two wheeled devices, you know, maybe not the delivery drivers that park in them all the time, but we'll share them with the micro-mobility folks, no problem. That's good. So you don't see a big come to blows between, say, the skateboarders and the e-scooter people and more traditional bicyclists. I don't necessarily see that. I think I see an education, an etiquette, maybe etiquette that just needs to be developed as these new technologies become more popular. Just so, you know, when somebody's on a scooter or something that can go 20, 20 plus miles an hour and somebody's cruising on a bicky bike at eight miles an hour, you just got to, you know, call out that you're going to pass and give them space and make sure that we just, you know, let everybody have a positive experience out there. Don't, don't ruin anybody's day just because you zipped by on the type of thing. Right. And let's hope that that's the, the coming reality. Because I know there have been some conflicts, you know, there are some traditional cyclists who look down on e-bikes and so forth and so on, but maybe we can do the aloha spirit and get over that. And you've got to remember when you look at Amsterdam or Copenhagen, these places didn't spring up one day and become bike friendly places. They were policy decisions and people deciding to do it and it's taken them 30, 40, 50 years to become, and they still, of course, I'm sure there's, you know, unfortunately accidents. I'm sure there are people that are cut off by cyclists, but they've come to accommodate it over the course of many, many years. Yeah. My big thing tends to be that, that we're all people, we're all people trying to move around as much as possible. I try to use, you know, people first, a person on a bike, a person on a scooter, just to remind everybody that, you know, as soon as I get off that device or whatever, like we're all just people and we're all trying to go the same places and we want to make sure that we get there safely and, you know, and there will be, there, like you said, there will be crashes there that's, that's, you know, ideally we can minimize them and make them as least impactful as possible. But, you know, and with that, I think it's just unfortunate growing pains and making sure that we have the space that's needed to, to accommodate all these users. And not forget there are growing pleasures as people ride more and are healthier and there is less congestion for drivers who are not fighting with quite so many cars. So we got to, I think we're going to have to put our head down and get through a, a period of adjustment here. And that's kind of what this show is about and kind of what I'm hoping to talk to a lot of different people about. So this has been great. We're going to wrap up in a minute here. I want to thank you very much and invite you to come back anytime you want. And I will start bugging you for when you're going to come back for a future show and we'll talk about more of this because we're certainly, we're certainly not done. But one of the radio shows I listened to has a blank check question. And that goes like, if, if we could write you a check for, not you personally, HBL, we could write HBL a check for a specific project for a specific initiative for something. And you could have it have the check in your hand tomorrow and the project underway the day after that. What would it be? What would you do? I think our biggest need right now is, is greater direct advocacy, you know, relations with the policy makers and the decision makers. We used to have a full-time advocacy position and really right now we're kind of, we have a couple of part-time people that really focus on it, but we don't have as much direct involvement as I think we could as this organization. And as I mentioned earlier, our focuses are so broad that one blank check isn't going to solve all of my, all of my dreams. I think I would sort of solve all your dreams I want more than I can solve. I think greater involvement on the advocacy and policy side, just because I think people often underestimate the, the impact that has in our day-to-day lives, whether it's, you know, infrastructure or policies, directions, you know, things like that that really do have a huge impact on kind of the underlying networks around our lives. So I think we can make sure bikes are at the table or even just in general micro-mobility, non-vehicle moving around, is at the table more often in those conversations. And is HBL the vehicle for that or is it, do we need some other or others kind of pushing it the same door here? That's a good question. I think we have a lot of partners, you know, that work towards this, whether it's Blue Planet, whether it's PATH on the Big Island, whether, so I think it's, it's a bit of a collective effort. And HBL is one of the larger when it comes to bicycle focused nonprofits, especially with staff in Hawaii. So I do think we might be leading or at least, you know, helping to form that coalition, maybe more than some others. But, you know, I think using the, using the tools and resources we have is probably a little bit easier than creating something brand new. But I see a, you know, a collective being really the way to get this accomplished. And you have Vicky, which is already partially semi quasi government collective connected, however we would describe that. So that's great. Well, you got a new governor coming in, whoever it may be. You've got a new city council coming in. You've got a mayor who I don't think has really been tested on this. So I think there's a lot of room for that advocacy role. And if it's done in the Aloha spirit, and, you know, and I think that's, that's could be very influential in the coming years. So Travis, we're out of time. I want to thank you tremendously. I think the HBL is in very good hands is considering your, your bio, I don't think they could have found anybody better. Big shoes to fill with Lori, but fortunately, she and you don't wear the same size. So our style. But thank you very, very much. I will ask you to come back. Thank you all for joining us. This has been the two revolution rolling with the Hawaii bicycling league, new director Travis, Travis Council. I don't know if this is your first public interview, but certainly one of the early ones and you've really landed on your feet here. So we'll be back in a couple of weeks with another discussion about micro mobility. You can reach me at the two wheel revolution at gmail.com. I'm open to your suggestions. You want to volunteer to be on a show? I love that too. And it's been a very interesting discussion for me. I hope you enjoyed it as well. Aloha. Do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.